Page 54 - Studio International - June 1972

(Left)
Rita Donagh
Reflection on three weeks in May 1970
152.5 x 152.5 cm
Oil on canvas
(Below)
Reading University Fine Art
Department, May 197o

painting. If not transparent, such pictures are the fine art department of Reading right. To read specific parts of this rather
usually in the palest of colours, or simply in University. A studio had been painted white, large canvas initially encouraged one to look
white, they very often employ devices of and had been divided into squares, some of for an echoic or reversed motif elsewhere among
classical perspective to indicate depths which which were marked with a cross. The central the 121 squares, (as one mechanically does in a
lie within their clarity of surface, and they are rectangle of the painting reproduces this grid classic crossword pattern); but this does not
usually drawn rather than painted. Rita of squares, and is in fact a plan of the studio, occur, which is the painting's real strength, and
Donagh's work has all these characteristics. on which are superimposed two perspective why it appears toughly made as a picture rather
I suppose that The Large Glass is the major projections and a greatly enlarged detail of the than a diagram. Terry Setch produced
influence on Reflection ... ; it also reminds one plan, which fills the whole of the picture area. something of a tour de force, pretending to be
of some of the plates from Ernst's Fiat modes, Events outside the studio at the time are an Italian cubist of circa 1913 (and there was
pereat ars, of certain early drawings of de recorded, such as the Kent State shootings, more to the picture than that). John Loker's
Chirico, and of some things by Picabia, especially which occurred during the first week of the cool Six Horizons was interestingly related to
his 192o photograph of the Duchamp, teaching activity. So too are concerns with his recent horizontal fibreglass pieces. Edwina
Elevage de Poussière. other paintings (the left-hand line relates to a Leapman's tall rectangle had a variously painted
Apart from this, there are other aspects of figure in one of these) and extra-pictorial light blue surface/ground which contained a
the picture which make one want to relate it interests (on the right are marks derived from stack of five interior rectangles, also blue, whose
to the Dada tradition: in particular the wavering Thoreau's drawings of Walden Pond). regularity seemed to owe more to Judd than
line which goes from top to bottom of the left- There were no trends at Liverpool which their softish emergence did to Rothko. Derek
hand side of the canvas. It is reminiscent, as could be related to any meaningful Boshier's Sixteen Situations, previously seen in
often happens in Dada and post-Dada drawing, developments in recent painting. I believe the Alexandra Palace last summer and also
of string (itself a characteristic Dada interest in systems to be a red herring, and the published as a book, uses a rather boring
medium), which when cast retains some of the `return to figuration' to be untested by the structure (of a cube and a twice-high tower
torsion and stiffness inherent in it, thus falling production of good new pictures. There next to it) which is terribly well-judged for his
in an aleatory way which nonetheless suggests were a number of individual works in the purposes, since it's used in vastly differing
some artistic purpose. I thought of a similar exhibition which were impressive or likeable. scales and social situations, and is something
line in Picabia's Prenez garde a la peinture, Alan Green submitted the best picture I have that one can't quite recognize as being an
along which is written, in tiny capitals, seen of his. The diagrammatic strength of its art-work. It's a subtle and often very funny
`force indépendante'. However, I would not large 11 x 11 grid division was deftly series whose various implications (see next
suggest that there is much random complicated by four colours working as month's Studio International) might be pondered
independence of the elements in Reflection . . . constituent parts of internal cubing, no colour over by the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation. q
It has been carefully structured. The painting is making a single square but sometimes
about a three-week-long period of teaching in delineating two right angles, left to down to